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You’re living the dream as a freelance writer…except it’s less like a dream and more like a nightmare.

Barely scraping by, exhausted, resentful, hating writing even though you used to love it and at one tie thought that this would be the perfect job. What happened? Where did things go wrong?

Chances are pretty good that it can be traced back to one simple cause: you’re underselling your freelance writing services.

Are You Underselling Your Freelance Writing Services?

There are 12 signs you’re underselling your freelance writing services and you might be surprised at how many you can identify with. If you find one that you know you’re guilty of, tweet it and help out your fellow freelance writers.

Maybe it’s time you considered raising your prices.

1. You haven’t raised your prices in a while.

Are you still using those super-competitive 1970’s prices?

A year or two or five goes by quickly. It’s easy to forget that you need to revisit your pricing and consider upping it to meet current industry levels. You need to make a living in the 21st century, not the 20th. Your prices must reflect that. Of course, maybe you already know this but you hate to inform current clients of price increases because you’re afraid to lose them, or dread their response.

Knowing your clients, how many do you think will go away after a price raise? How many will stay?

Once you know the facts (with #4 being an educated guess), uniformly raise your prices to be competitive and contact all of your clients. Be careful about giving one client a deal and not another; word gets around.

Consider this strange thought: sometimes higher prices bring you into a new bracket of clients and can actually open doors for you that your lower prices would not.

2. You are overloaded and overwhelmed with work.

You’re working more than you ever did and…making less.

You could write a magazine article for $500 or you could write 25 blog posts for $20. While the magazine article will take hard work, it is one project, one client, one deadline, and one (if you want to think of it this way) headache. 25 blog posts means 25 deadlines, 25 clients, and a lot more management time as well as topics you need to write about.

It’s your choice: take every little low-priced piece of work that comes your way, or draw a line in the sand as a standard that you won’t go below and stick by it. And that line? It has to be a livable line, i.e. enough money to live off of with a reasonable amount of time left for enjoying life.

3. Your clients don’t even attempt to negotiate.

We’re not saying you should pick prices that are high enough to make your clients stop breathing when you announce them, but if you notice that your prices don’t even make them pause and try to negotiate, maybe you’re aiming too low.

Negotiation isn’t a sign that someone thinks you’re trying to rip them off and that they need to get your pricing back in line. Instead, it’s a sign that they actually want your product, and are willing to do a little work to see if they can’t get it on their terms. Negotiation is sometimes the sign of someone sticking around, not someone leaving.

Don’t set prices low so as to avoid negotiation. Set them higher to be in a better position for it.

4. You’re satisfied with less money and think exposure will pay the bills.

Well sure, money sounds great. But if you lower the bar so that “we can only pay you $10 dollars for your magazine article but you’ll get exposure” doesn’t raise alarm bells, you aren’t going to be freelancing for long. You’ll be working a regular job and writing on the side.

Small (or no) payment writing is often tagged with the promise of “exposure.” What is the price on that? Can you put exposure in your savings account? Evaluate just how valuable exposure is, and if the exposure a client promises can actually benefit you.

Freelance writing will cover many topics. Many of the things you’ll write about will be wholly unrelated to each other, and to you as a writer. Exposure in that genre doesn’t mean much.

The client’s audience probably doesn’t care about you. Is the audience of this client interested in finding a freelance writer, or are they interested in the topic? If it’s the latter, they don’t care who you are and what you do, and never will. They are the client’s fans, not your fans.

Don’t forget you’re the hired pen. The client needs your output, not you personally. Letting their audience know about your output is a nice ego boost, but it won’t bring much back to you. That sounds harsh, but when you are earning your living, you don’t have time for ego boosts.

Rethink how you think about money. Understand the difference between a pittance and a paycheck.

5. You have yet to equate time with money.

Time = money. You have limited time. You determine what that time is worth.

If you don’t understand this, you’ll never appreciate how those low-priced freelance projects are actually a loss, and not real income.

You’ll only make a success out of taking low-paying jobs if you never sleep and have discovered a 30-hour day. For the rest of us, we must look at projects not only in terms of the money, but the time it is going to take us to earn that money and if it is worth it.

6. You don’t think you’re an expert.

“I’m not good enough to write about that. I don’t know enough. That other writer probably knows more than I do. No one would care what I had to say.” You think you’re a fraud.

In some ways, expertise is a form of confidence, not knowledge. It is always just beyond our reach, and that means we operate one step out of our comfort zone and have to gather the courage and confidence to project a landing on the other side.

Maybe you can’t write detailed magazine articles about brain surgery, but you can grab at those topics you’d never considered that don’t require specialist knowledge. That gap between what you comfortably know, and what you are supposed to produce, is often closed by research, practice, and a proven system involving drafts and editing.

Take the small leaps and become an expert when you stick the landing. That’s how you keep growing as a writer.

7. You prefer to be safe above anything else.

It’s money. You need money. Not having money is scary. It’s safe to take on anything that brings in money. You’d never consider turning down a chance to earn money, you’d never gamble that something bigger and better is out there, because that is most certainly unsafe.

I can’t make promises and say that if you refuse the jobs that are priced to low, refuse the almost-free jobs that promise some form of exposure, that the Big One will land in your lap. It might not. That’s why it’s called a gamble: you sometimes take a chance and turn down those safe choices and set yourself up for the larger opportunities.

You’ll never land the Big One if you don’t plan for it, and that planning won’t happen when you’re juggling endless low-paying jobs.

8. You’re terrified of confrontation.

You’d rather do anything–ANYTHING–than deal with confrontation. But you know what negotiation is? Confrontation. And you know what asking for a livable rate is? Confrontation. You’re confronting the client’s sincere desire to save money with your sincere desire to make a living.

The best thing to do to get over being afraid of confrontation is to confront. You don’t have to be aggressive, but letting your freelancing work be ruled by a fear of confrontation turns you into a doormat. Oh, how tempting it is for a client to use that fear of confrontation to get you to “write a few extra draft ideas” or “give us some options” or “throw in a few hundred more words” at the last minute before you get paid.

Not all confrontation is angry, but it should be about fairness towards you and the client. And yes, some confrontation might lead to the end of a client account. Accept it and move on.

Learning to say “no” to clients is terrifying, but will help you get your work-life balance back.

9. The word “no” has yet to enter your vocabulary.

Saying the word “no” is the only way you’ll keep your sanity, your health, and your abilities. Saying yes to everyone and every project is definitely going to lead to writer burnout and resentment.

No, you don’t have to take every project. No, being desperate is not always a good reason. No, you don’t have time for that project though that doesn’t mean the project isn’t worthwhile for someone else.

10. Your only goal is paying rent.

What kind of goal do you have with your writing? Is it merely to cover this month’s bills, or to pay off debt that controls your life? Hopefully, you have something larger in mind for your life’s work.

While you may not want to write down a comprehensive business plan, it certainly helps you to write down what you want to see happen with your writing, and then give it a timeline.

For example, if you have considerable debt or financial obligations that are driving you to take any and all jobs out of desperation, it might not hurt to get a side job for a while. Put debt reduction on the timeline and plan it out so you have an end goal to look forward to as you move on to the next step.

Your writing should have a bigger goal than keeping you out of the hangman’s noose. Hopefully, you want to achieve something more from your writing, such as being a published author with a book, or having a blog with X amount of daily traffic that you can live off of. Until you are out of the grip of financial terror, you won’t even consider such goals and you won’t take any steps to choose clients that can help you reach those goals. You’ll take whatever you can get before the next bill is due.

11. You are embarrassed to talk about yourself.

Humility is in short supply these days, unfortunately, but when it comes to finding work and promoting yourself to a potential client, you need to be able talk about yourself realistically. For some people, talking about themselves, and talking themselves up is natural. But for some artists and writers (myself included), talking about your abilities in even mildly positive terms is very challenging because it feels like bragging.

When asked, you don’t have to say “I am the greatest writer ever!” but you should be able to say “I have the experience and I can write this for you.”

If you find yourself quickly getting used to self-promotion, a word of caution: Don’t over-promise and find yourself in a mess later because you actually don’t have the chops to deliver what you promised. Be honest about what your abilities are. This includes things like:

How quickly you can work.

How many projects you can manage at once.

What topics you are able to write on.

Whether you can work with other writers or designers on a project.

Technological capabilities.

Do you know how you’d answer if asked any of these? If not, this is a good time to take stock of what you can do, and be ready to answer confidently.

12. You think pricing is the only reason clients come back.

A low price might be the only reason clients come back if their sole goal is saving a buck. (Do you really want those clients?) You forget that amazing service, fantastic writing, and an overall slice of awesome will trump cheap every time for clients worth your time.

When you know you have the skills and the ability to deliver a great product, you can confidently ask for higher rates. And, when you deliver, your clients will have no problem the next time they come back for additional writing services.

Clients who come back because you have cheap prices are clients that are going to make your life miserable. They aren’t there because of what you can do, they’re there because of what they plan to do.

They’re bean counters and are going to wring every last free drop out of you that they can. There is a strange inverse connection between the amount a client pays and the noise level they make. Clients that are at the level where they understand legitimate pricing also are professional enough to not bother or micromanage you. They trust your skills, as a professional.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, Dan, particularly with the experience you have as a freelance writer.

Dan Edelen

Julie,

Because you asked…

For comparison sake, I charge the industry average rate for my region (as based upon several sources, including the Editorial Freelancers Association, Writer’s Guild of America East, and National Writers Union).

1. At one of the most notable freelance project sites online, I saw a 250-page tech manual project go to a $99 bid. That has been the trend of late.

2. In 2013, the number of calls I received from “writing mills” selling their services quintupled. The callers are not American, so I assume the writers are not either. Their rates are a third of that for my region. They did not realize they called a competitor.

3. Even large companies ask for freebies now. “Since you’re working on our website content, we’d like to tack on a corporate style guide update at no charge.” You haven’t lived as a freelancer until a cash-flush company rejects the language on your contract because the wording states that expanding a project’s scope will incur additional charges.

4. Increasingly, freelance recruiting companies are halving their pay to freelancers while doubling or tripling their own charges to clients. After one such company contacted me for rush work, I was asked to lower my rate to a quarter of my normal charges. (I should have had them contact the folks in #2 above.)

5. With the demise of newspapers, many talented writers are invading the freelance space. Economics 101 tells you what this does to rates.

Those are just a few thoughts. What I see, in general, is a rise in the amount of freelance work available, but a sharp drop in what many clients will pay.

Despite any cold water I may have thrown on someone’s dreams of getting rich as a freelance writer, your article is a good one, Julie, and contains excellent advice.

Dan Edelen

Let me add this one thing: If you are freelancing for Fortune 1000 companies, I don’t think much has changed. But for freelancers who work primarily with small to midsized companies, the open source and free mentalities are starting to take hold. As a result, I am finding more and more want something for nothing. Worse, they are finding people who will work for nothing. This poisons the well for everyone.

This is seriously helpful! I am a freelance writer (well just started via Fiverr and now building my own service) but this really helps with me gauging where my prices should be! I really appreciate this post and definitely just slapped it into my bookmarks :D

I have only just started freelancing after leaving a full time job in digital marketing and this advice is very helpful. Thank you for putting out there so I may learn without having to make the same mistakes!